The first screenshots from The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn have hit the web. Check out Jamie Bell and Andy Serkis as the motion capture incarnations of boy reporter Tintin and boozy sea dog Captain Haddock, respectively.

This film adaptation of Hergé's comic serial, which is directed by Steven Spielberg and co-produced by Peter Jackson, is slated to hit theaters Christmas 2011. What's it about? In an interview with Empire, Spielberg admitted, "The first part of the film, which is the most mysterious part, certainly owes much to not only film noir but the whole German Brechtian theatre."

The films also draws its plot from three Tintin books: The Crab with the Golden Claws (which details Tintin's first meeting with Captain Haddock) and The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure (which follow the duo's quest to dredge up pirate loot). Nick Frost and Simon Pegg play the pratfall-prone detectives Thomson and Thompson, and Daniel Craig portrays the pirate Red Rackham.

The Tintin series frequently went into supernatural and science fictional weirdness, but it looks like this film will be a pulpy/espionage affair — indeed, Tintin was the first man on the moon, and Spielberg notes in the interview, "I think the Moon ones are terrific, but they'd be good for the third or fourth Tintin film, if we get that far." Here are the rest of the photos from the November issue of Empire.